Savannah City Council drowns cruise ship terminal

After four years of study, two reports costing $327,000 and considerable public outcry, the future of a cruise terminal in Savannah sank Thursday.

Savannah City Council voted unanimously to deny funding to the next stage of a cruise terminal study, effectively ending debate on the issue.

“I am extremely concerned about the experience of other cities making such a large investment in something that as far as I’m concerned is speculative,” said Alderwoman-at-large Carol Bell. “And the other thing, I’m not sure a real business case has been made.”

Alderman Tom Bordeaux was more blunt.

“I thought this was a dumb idea before I got into office and the closer I got to it as I sat on council I thought it was a worse idea,” said Bordeaux, though he cautioned he didn’t want to stifle discussion on outside-the-box ideas for improving Savannah.

“This should have been thrown out before we spent all that money, but it should have been discussed,” Bordeaux said.

Even the terminal’s original proponent, Alderman Tony Thomas, who initiated the studies and formed a cruise ship task force, was among the nine no votes.

Thomas urged similar study and diligence on Savannah’s upcoming arena project to protect the city from being “saddled with a maintenance obligation into the future we don’t want.”

His no vote came largely because of consultant BEA Architect’s conclusion that the Savannah River Landing site was the most promising for a terminal, Thomas said, and that troubled him.

“I happen to be aware there are serious problems with that site,” he said, without elaborating. “I don’t believe it would be our responsibility as a city to you the taxpayers to invest any money in that site we haven’t already invested that would benefit that site and not you the taxpayers.”

Council voted after listening to public comment from 10 people, all but one decidedly anti-cruise.

“I bring an emphatic ‘no’ to the idea of any more expenditures in the interest of cruise lines and the servicing of Savannah,” said Richard Ellis, who moved to Savannah from Hilton Head about a year ago.

Ellis has taken two cruises. Getting on and off a 3,500-4,500 passenger cruise ship was “the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had,” he said.

Retired economics professor Ken Zapp also has first-hand experience, having taken 14 cruises. He was initially supportive of a Savannah cruise terminal, he said. But then he analyzed Miami-based BEA Architects’ marketing study and found it unrealistically rosy and lacking references or empirical support. BEA ignored evidence that most cruise passengers drive directly to the ship and spend very little onshore, Zapp said. Other BEA assumptions can be challenged, too.

“BEA assumed that passenger numbers will increase more than 16 percent each year for 50 years, even though ship departures actually fell 5 percent last year in Charleston,” Zapp said.

The lone voice for the terminal came from a representative of Blue Circle Concrete, owners of the silo site on Hutchinson Island, one of three possible terminal sites examined. He urged the city to consider a partnership with the company to reduce the city’s risk in building a terminal.

Grassroots group Be Smart Savannah has for months sounded alarms about the risks of a cruise terminal, detailing the financial woes of other cities’ cruise terminals including moribund projects in Mobile, San Diego, Houston and Norfolk on its website www.cruiseshipsinsavannah.com.

All that information proved persuasive, said Be Smart co-founder Pam Miller.

“People saw those facts and became educated and it could only lead to one decision,” Miller said. “We saw that today.”